It’s an election year. We all know this because in the far-too-short Parliamentary cycle, this year of 2010 is year three of the current government.

The subtler proclivities of the protagonist party members also tell us that this year is an election year. Evidence the Op-Ed by George Brandis in today’s Oz. Actually, it’s a fairly poor effort on Brandis’s behalf to paint Tony Abbott as something akin to himself, and not the dyed-in-the-wool conservative that he truly is. I thought his Alfred Deakin Lecture, delivered in October 2009, was a far better precis of Liberalism as he saw it. Abbott doesn’t espouse any of those values, as a Liberal.
It’s also ironic that Brandis, who voted for Turnbull in the most recent leadership spill and is a self-declared centrist Liberal, should be making what I regard as a weak-kneed attempt at assuaging voters fears of Tony Abbott’s obviously hard-nosed right-wing conservative beliefs as something not to be feared. Tell that to the working voters, the common-or-garden forgotten people that John Howard forgot. We all know Abbott is a Howardian accolyte and leopards never change spots.
yes Virginia, 2010 is an election year. Never forget the past for history contains it’s own lessons which those who neglect will pay the price for. Abbott is not the political fox that Howard was, but he’s an ardent student who will be continuing to listen at the feet of his master.